By Dan Remon · Evidence checked October 2026
Of everything that has moved my own goals forward, one thing has done more than any book or course: a room of people on a similar path who expect me to do what I said I’d do.
The accountability is the part that works. Once I’ve told that group what I’ll get done by the next check-in, it gets done, including the weeks when life gets in the way, progress stalls or I’d rather stay comfortable.
Lists of mastermind benefits tend to run to 30 items or more, and most are the same few benefits reworded. Here are the 8 that hold up, what the research on peer groups says, and how to choose a group worth your time.
What is a mastermind group?
A mastermind group is a small group of peers who meet regularly to work on each other’s goals, problems and decisions. Each member reports on what they committed to last time, brings a current problem or decision, gets input from the others and leaves with actions to report on next time. A facilitator usually runs it and holds the standard. It differs from a course (there’s no curriculum), from networking (the point is the work rather than the contacts) and from 1:1 performance coaching (in a group, most of the input comes from peers dealing with the same kind of problems).
Do mastermind groups work?
Nobody has run a large trial on masterminds by that name. The closest research is randomised trials of peer groups for business owners, and the results are positive.
In China, researchers organised business associations for the owner-managers of young firms. They randomly assigned 2,820 firms either to small groups whose managers met monthly for a year or to a control group with no meetings. Firms in the groups increased revenue by 8.1%, and profit, inputs, borrowing, the number of business partners and a management score all rose significantly. The effects were still there a year after the meetings ended, and firms randomly assigned better peers showed higher growth.1
In India, a randomised field experiment with 100 high-growth technology startups paired founders with other entrepreneurs for in-person advice. Founders advised by peers who managed people formally, with regular meetings, consistent goal setting and frequent feedback to staff, grew 28% larger and were 10 percentage points less likely to fail 2 years later than founders advised by peers with an informal approach.2
What I take from both: regular peer meetings can change business results, and who sits in the room changes what you get from it. These were specific groups, young firms in China and technology startups in India, so treat the numbers as a direction rather than a promise.
Accountability: the benefit that matters most
1. You follow through on what you commit to
Telling a group what you’ll do by next time changes how you spend the week. Miss it and you report the miss to people who will ask what happened. That small social cost is often enough to get you past procrastination. Most to-do lists carry no cost at all.
There’s research behind this. A meta-analysis of 138 studies that randomly assigned 19,951 people found that getting people to monitor their progress helped them reach their goals (d = 0.40). The effect was larger when progress was reported to others or made public, and when it was physically recorded.3 A mastermind does both: you write your actions down and you report them to the room.
2. Weekly actions instead of yearly intentions
Annual goals are too far away to change what you do on a Tuesday. A good group turns them into actions small enough to finish before the next check-in. “Proposal sent to the 3 shortlisted clients” passes. “Work on sales” doesn’t, because nobody can tell whether it happened. You either did it or you didn’t, and everyone can see which. How I set the bigger targets those actions come from is in goal setting that survives the quarter.
Better thinking: feedback, decisions and clarity
3. Feedback from people with nothing to protect
Inside your company, people have reasons to tell you what you want to hear. Friends and family want you to feel better this week. A mastermind gives you a personal board of advisors with no stake in your business and no reason to soften it. They’ll tell you the plan is too big, the hire is wrong or the price is too low before you’ve spent a quarter finding out.
It’s also the one room where you can say what you can’t say to your team or your investors: that you’re stretched, unsure or thinking about a big change. In a good group, what’s said there stays there.
4. Faster decisions
Most founders have a decision that has sat for weeks. Bring it to the group with the options and the deadline, hear how people who have faced the same call made it, and leave with a decision and a date. Everything waiting behind that decision starts moving again.
5. Saying it out loud clears your thinking
I call this the expression effect. Explaining a problem to people outside it forces you to lay out the facts in order, and halfway through you often hear your own answer before anyone has replied. The group still adds something: they test the answer you just found.
Better information and a better network
6. Information you can’t get inside your company
In the China study, the researchers gave news of 2 financial products to randomly chosen managers, and it spread to the others in their groups. Where the information could help a competitor, it spread less in groups with more competitors.1 In practice that’s suppliers, pricing, hires and what worked in a market you haven’t entered yet. You hear the version people only share with peers they trust.
7. The room sets your standard
Both studies point the same way. Firms assigned better peers grew more, and founders advised by peers who ran regular meetings, set goals and gave frequent feedback grew larger.1,2 Sit with people a stage ahead of you and their normal becomes your benchmark. Sit with people who accept excuses and you’ll start accepting your own.
8. Partnerships and introductions
Managers in the China study also formed more business partnerships in their regular group meetings than in one-off meetings, which the researchers read as better matching between suppliers and clients. They suggest trust built through repeated meetings may have contributed.1 See the same people over months and you learn who delivers. Introductions, referrals and joint projects come out of that.
How to choose a mastermind group
The room is the product, so choose it the way you’d make a key hire: on standard and fit.
- Peers at your stage or a step ahead. Peer quality changed results in both trials.
- Non-competitors. Useful information spreads less when people are chasing the same customers.
- Written actions and a report every time. If members leave without actions and nobody reports on them next time, it’s a discussion group.
- A regular rhythm. In the China study, regular meetings produced more partnerships than one-off ones.
- Someone who holds the standard. A facilitator who asks about the miss, keeps the meeting on the work and keeps what’s said confidential.
Selective entry helps for the same reason. Every member raises or lowers the standard of the room.
How to get the most from a mastermind group
Start with an honest starting point. Before you join, write down where you are now, where you want to be in 12 months, what has held you back and what you need most: accountability, strategy, support or skills. The answer to the last one tells you whether a group is the right tool at all.
Then run every week the same way. I use the Weekly Compass, a 30-minute plan before the week starts: the 3 outcomes that matter this week, when you’ll work on each one and what you’ll say no to. Those 3 outcomes are what you commit to the group. Write them so a stranger could tell whether they happened.
When you report, put it in writing: done, not done and what got in the way. A missed action tells you something about your system, so the useful discussion is what broke and what changes next week. Feedback, not failure. The full weekly rhythm, including the Friday review, is in a productivity system that survives a bad week.
Bring one ask every time: a decision, a problem or an introduction you need. The members who arrive with something specific leave with the most.
How to start
- The 1% Scorecard. 8 questions, 2 minutes, free. You get a score out of 100 and the one thing to install first, which makes a good first commitment to bring to any group.
- The Quest. My performance membership: a tested system and a room of founders who run on standards. One change per 28-day cycle, cancel anytime.
Choose the room carefully. Then do what you told it you’d do.
Related reading: how to run a personal annual review, The implementation mindset: how to turn plans into action and 10 components of success, and how to define yours.
FAQ
Are mastermind groups worth it?
They’re worth it when the group makes you act and the peers are at or above your level. In a randomised trial with 2,820 young Chinese firms, a year of monthly peer meetings raised revenue by 8.1%, and the effects lasted a year after the meetings ended. A group that only talks won’t give you that.
What happens in a mastermind group meeting?
Each member reports on the actions they committed to last time, then brings a current problem or decision to the group. The others give input from their own experience, and everyone leaves with written actions for next time.
What is the difference between a mastermind group and coaching?
Coaching is 1:1 work with one person focused on you. A mastermind gives you input from several peers who face similar problems, plus the accountability of reporting to them. Many founders use both: a coach to build the system and a group to hold them to it.
Who should join a mastermind group?
Founders, executives and business owners who already know what to do and want it done every week. If you want a curriculum, motivation or someone to do the work for you, a group isn’t the right fit.
Sources
- Cai, J., & Szeidl, A. (2018). Interfirm relationships and business performance. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3), 1229-1282. doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx049
- Chatterji, A., Delecourt, S., Hasan, S., & Koning, R. (2019). When does advice impact startup performance? Strategic Management Journal, 40(3), 331-356. doi.org/10.1002/smj.2987
- Harkin, B., Webb, T. L., Chang, B. P. I., Prestwich, A., Conner, M., Kellar, I., Benn, Y., & Sheeran, P. (2016). Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 198-229. doi.org/10.1037/bul0000025
